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Potato Omelet

A baked potato is mixed with eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, then fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Potato Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the potato

  1. Bake the potato in its skin until tender.

  2. Pass the mealy part through a fine sieve.

Make the omelet

  1. Mix the potato with the yolks of the eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  3. Fry the omelet in hot butter for 4 to 5 minutes, or bake in the oven if preferred.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato
Provides starchy, mealy body that gives the omelet a soft, tender texture.
Eggs
Whisked whites trap air for lightness, while the yolks bind the mixture and add richness.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds flavour and helps the omelet brown on the outside.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites hold air that makes the omelet light. Folding gently keeps that air in, since overmixing deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, lemon, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, lemon, nutmeg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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